Cirque de l'Enfer
by BizarreBrittany
Summary: Many people have gone missing in the past month, around the same time that this new circus came to town, but its not like any circus. Its run by the malevolant demon, Jester. And guess what, kiddies? Its time for the opening!  ReaderXDante
1. Chapter 1

The door opened with a slam as Dante stepped out into the room. Going over to the fridge, he takes out a can of beer and opens the tab with a click as he drinks it idly. Sitting on his desk, he sighs and looks up at the ceiling.

"Damn, I haven't gotten a call in days."

Crushing the can with his bare hand, he tosses it at the trash can near the corner, missing the rim as it falls to the floor. Sighing again, he runs his hand through his silvery hair.

Suddenly, the phone starts to ring.

Dante smirks and bangs his fist on the desk, sending the phone flying through the air and into his hand as he puts the speaker to his ear.

"Devil May Cry," he says in his usual business tone.

"Yes, hello. My name is Lucifer," a man's shaky voice says on the other line.

"And?"

Silence. Dante sighs in annoyance.

"If you don't want me to hang up, you'll state your business."

"Wait! Don't hang up!"

"Then what do you want?"

There is a shaky intake of breath on the other side of the line before the man speaks again.

"My friend went missing a few days ago," the man says with a tone of sorrow to his voice. Dante sighs unsympathetically.

"Sorry, man. I'm not the police," he says as he hangs the phone up and rolls his eyes as he settles into his desk chair and puts his feet up on the top of it. 'I finally get a call, and for that?' he thinks to himself. Looking over to where the door was in the office, he watched as envelopes came sliding through the mail slot and onto the floor. Collecting all the envelopes, he drops them lazily on his desk, only to be startled by a knock on the door of his office.

Dante slowly opens the door to see a man dressed rather nicely with fine, brunette hair and hazel eyes with glasses standing outside.

"You need something?" Dante asks indifferently.

The man slowly smiles at him.

"Ah, yes. You must be Mr. Dante, am I correct?"

"Yeah?"

"I am Cain Balthier," the man says with a little bow to Dante as he rolls his eyes at the man.

"And?"

"And I am looking for someone. Maybe you can help."

"Seems like everyone's looking for someone today." Dante says insincerely as he goes to shut the door until Cain puts his foot in it to stop the door from closing.

"Not just anyone: my daughter." The man says almost sternly as he stares into Dante's light blue eyes.

"So?"

"Please, Dante. May I come in?"

"Sure, but I don't guarantee I'll help you." Dante says matter-of-factly as he opens the door and walks over to his desk, sitting in his chair and making himself comfortable for a long and boring story. Cain walks over to the desk as well, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk and sighing comfortably before taking his glasses off and wiping them with his shirt.

"So your daughter's missing. So what."

"You don't understand. She's-"

"I don't think _you_ understand. I'm not the police, I'm a demon hunter. If this mission has nothing to do with demons, get your stuff and get out." Dante said.

Cain lets out a small huff of frustration.

"What if I told you that she may have been kidnapped by a demon?"

"Have you got any proof, then?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Then get out and come back when you do." Dante says as he props his feet up on his desk.

"Now just wait a minute. Let's just say that I'm completely prepared to pay out the ass if you can bring her back alive," Cain says, a dark smile tugging at his lips as he crosses his legs and waits patiently for Dante to answer. Dante leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, massaging his temples with his middle and index fingers.

"So do you have any leads at all for a mission like this?"

"Sort of. Here." Cain states as he pulls out a lime green flier and hands it to Dante as he looks it over. The print at the top was bold and there was a border around the whole thing with spiders on it as well as blurry pictures of some people.

"Cirque de l'Enfer? What the hell does that mean?"

"It's French for 'Circus of Hell'." Cain says, stretching his broad shoulders as Dante continues to read the flier.

"What does a gothic circus have to do with demons kidnapping your daughter?"

"I have some strange suspicions about them. Many people have been disappearing ever since this freaky circus came to town, and now my daughter is among those missing. I want to get to the bottom of this, and fast."

"Then why don't _you _go search for your daughter?" Dante challenges as he drops the flier onto his desk. Cain smirks at him.

"Well, we all know who the stronger of us is, Dante."

Dante nods slightly as a cocky smirk ghosts over his lips.

"So what does this daughter of yours look like?"

Cain reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a wallet sized photo and hands it over to Dante. The girl in the photo was about average height, but had beautiful brunette hair and stunning green eyes that sparkled as the sun hit them in the picture. She was wearing a gorgeous blue and gold gown from the renaissance that framed her curvy body. Dante whistled silently to himself as he let his eyes wonder. Finally, he noticed the bruises covering her hands and raises an eyebrow.

"Hey, what's with the bruises on her hands?"

"Oh, that's from the stage combat fighting she does with the renaissance club she joined a while back. It's not important," Cain says as his expression changes to something like reminiscing with a hint of sorrow in his tone. Finally after a long pause he stands.

"Well, I'll leave this to you, Mr. Dante," Cain said with a smirk as he headed out of the office, leaving the picture and flier behind with Dante at his desk.

Dante leans back in his chair, looking over the picture again, then letting hit fall onto his desk top as he gets up, heading over to the bathroom and closing the door.

As a gust of wind blows into one of the open windows and hits Dante's desk, the lime green flier flies slowly to the floor, where the sentence at the bottom in extremely small print glimmers in the sunlight.

'So fun you'll be _dying _to go back.'


	2. Chapter 2

At the site of Cirque de l'Enfer, a girl sits in her dressing room, pulling on a black glitter bodysuit as the door creaks open and Jester enters, shutting the door behind him. He smiles his creepy grin at the girl as he strides over, taking the material of the bodysuit and smoothing it out over her shoulders. He bends down to look into the mirror at her blank _ eyes.

"Ready to open the show, my dear?" He asks her, quietly.

"Yes, sir," the girl responds as she turns on her heel gracefully and walks through the door into the blackness.

Jester smirks to himself as he leans against the dresser and admires his golden staff lovingly.

"It's good to be king."

Dante props his feet up on the seat across from him as he stares out the window, watching the world fly by in a fantastic blur.

'This is definantly the weirdest fucking train I've ever seen, that's for sure,' he thought to himself with a grunt.

Finding this train wasn't easy. Rumor had it that there was a special way to get to the site of the gothic cirque, and that was the ghost train. No passengers, no conductor, no engineers. It certainly was a challenge, but after finding that the train possessed some kind of demonic powers, he felt the rest would be smooth sailing from here on out. Getting up from his seat, Dante tucks one of his gloved hands into his pocket as the other gently feels his scruffy five o'clock shadow. It had been a total of two hours that he'd spent on this train and he was starting to get antsy.

"For fuck's sake, it's been two hours on our way to god-knows-where. Where the hell are we, anyway?" He asks himself as he glides over to the window, only to notice that the blur of the world seemed to be moving even faster now.

'Hm. That's odd,' he thought as he walked over to the window, then back out into the hallway and toward the conductor's room. He kicks the door open and walks in confidently even though there was no one there to stare in awe. Shaking his head, he walks over to the conductor's chair and stares out ahead of him to see a long stretch of train tracks leading to a stack of propane tanks! Gasping and cursing under his breath, Dante darts out of the conductor room and down the hall to the last car in the train, where he assumed the engineers were supposed to be. Looking around the engine room, he finds a lever with a red handle: the emergency brake. Grabbing a hold of it, Dante pulls with all his might as the train continues to head to what would surely be his death if he didn't stop this god forsaken train. When the brake wouldn't budge, he abandons it and goes back to the passenger car, searching for a quick and easy exit as the train inched closer to the propane tanks. Finding a window, Dante grips the edge and pulls up with all his strength, but the window wouldn't open.

"God fucking damnit!"

Running back to the other end of the hallway, Dante leaps forward and tucks his feet in as he crashes through the glass of the train window just as the train exploded from the impact with the propane tanks as he hits the ground. Once he was on his feet again, he turns and stares at the train's burning remains until a sharp pain sends him crashing back to reality to notice that his thigh had a shard of glass in it. Grunting, he yanks the shard of glass out of his thigh and stands, dusting himself off and looking around the unfamiliar area, his eyes locking on a forest clearing up ahead that broke into an abandoned parking lot, where a black and white striped circus tent towered over the smaller looking carnival that was going on around it. A cocky grin sweeps across Dante's face as he boasts himself thoughtfully.

"Jackpot!" He said to himself and as he starts walking toward the circus tent, a figure in a dark cloak dashes past him with much speed and ferocity. It seemed to be a girl from her feminine-looking fingers, which were black and blue for some reason he did not understand.

Then, it hit him.

That was Cain's daughter! From the looks of her figure, she appeared to be curvy, yet thin and strong-looking. He whistles to himself as he replays the scene of her dashing past him in his head.

"Surprise," a female's voice says as a hatchet goes through Dante's skull and out the other side. He collapses to the ground as a pool of blood forms around his head, soaking his silver hair.

The girl laughs as her gorgeous form melts away and turns back into Jester as demonic energy surrounds him. Then the girl in the dark cloak emerges from the forest clearing as rage locks in her for what she had done. How could she have lured Dante into a trap like this? She'd had enough. Running over to Jester, she kicks him across the face as something snaps. Backing away from his hunched form, she rushes over to Dante and reaches for his head, the bruises glistening in the sun.

The last thing he saw was Jester standing behind her.


End file.
